In the last two months, we learned about the spiritual awakening which spread across Eastern Europe prior to WWII. If you missed those posts and would like to read them, here are the links:
Courtesy of Professor John L. Heineman, Boston College
Today the story moves to . . . Hungary.
Dr. Alexander de Csia, the chief physician for the Hungarian Railway, witnessed the changes taking place in the churches of Czechoslovakia (See the story “A Message of Hope in the Time of Need – Eastern Europe, 1936–1939”), so he invited Evangelist James Stewart to Hungary to hold evangelistic meetings on behalf of the Evangelical Alliance of Hungary. Dr. Csia was burdened to see God work in his country and refused to accept the attitude of many that revival in Hungary was impossible.
Hungary, Spring of 1939
Stewart enlisted Christians to pray “around the clock,” and they each dedicated one hour a day for prayer. The first meetings were held in a small Methodist hall in Budapest, but after two days the services moved to the larger building of the German Baptist Church. After two or three more days, the crowds overflowed this location, and the meetings moved to the big Reformed Church, which boasted seating for 2000 people. Soon the overflow crowd had to stand in the center aisle during the entire service.
Just like he had done in other Eastern European countries, Stewart had scripture choruses and gospel songs translated and printed in booklets so everyone attending the meetings would have a copy. He introduced “Into My Heart,” “Jesus Never Fails,” “Yes, I know,” “Wounded for Me” and other songs. It wasn’t unusual to hear these tunes hummed in shops and whistled by delivery boys riding their bicycles down the street.
Stewart shared the message of John 3:16 and invited those who wanted to give their hearts to Christ to leave their seats immediately and go to the front. Hundreds of people surged forward, making their way through the overflow crowd in the aisles.
More prayer meetings formed in other parts of Budapest, and many Christians attended morning meetings on the topic of God’s plan for living a holy life. They left these meetings “determined to make things right in their own lives.” The revival campaign ended before Christmas but began again in 1938. The organizers rented the biggest concert and dance hall in Budapest, the “Redoubt.” In a few days, the crowds outgrew this location.
And the results . . .
Many Hungarians turned to Christ.
Many Christians confessed the sin in their lives and renewed their relationships with God and with each other.
New converts attended discipleship meetings.
School officials, including those from Roman Catholic schools, invited Stewart to speak to their students.
Students from the Baptist Seminary and Training School in Budapest went home to their villages and spread word about the revival.
Interested folks from all over Hungary extended invitations to hold meetings in their towns and cities.
Campaigns were set up in many locations throughout Hungary.
Andi Ungar, a Christian Jew, interpreted for Stewart at many of the meetings, and the two men spoke as if one person. Anti-Semites criticized Mr. Ungar’s role in the meetings, but Stewart and the other leaders ignored the criticism.
A great outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place in the city of Debrecen in eastern Hungary. Debrecen had long been called “The Geneva of Hungary” and “The Calvinist Rome.” Services were held at the Reformed Seminary, which had been established 300 years earlier. In addition to the evening gospel services, meetings carried on day after day for women and girls, for children, for prayer, for youth, and for Bible study. Many people shared about the work God was doing in their hearts.
In the spring of 1938, Stewart held his last campaign in Budapest in “The Tattersall,” a horse riding academy. At the end of each day, “hired laborers quickly cleaned the huge arena, put down fresh shavings, and arranged four thousand chairs which had been rented for the purpose.” The chairs were gathered and stored after the meeting each night.
Members of the Salvation Army and various Baptist groups formed a brass orchestra, which accompanied the revival songs. Several thousand people attended the meetings each night during the two-week campaign. On the final Sunday, over five thousand young people from Budapest and the surrounding towns and villages gathered for a youth rally.
James Stewart left Hungary in 1938, but the revival led by the Hungarian people continued to spread across the country. More souls turned to Christ. More hearts and lives changed. Stewart returned to Hungary for short visits in 1939, 1940, and in 1946 after WWII. He was overjoyed to witness the revival fires still burning, despite the ravages of war.
Buda Castle and Danube River – Budapest. By Costel Slincu.
Source:
Stewart, Ruth. James Stewart Missionary, A Biography. Revival Literature, 1977.
For the past two months, I’ve posted individual stories about children who fled the Nazis and survived the Holocaust by taking the Kindertransport to England. An earlier post explains how the Kindertransport program was created. If you missed that post and would like to read it, here’s the link: The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Rescued from Nazi Territory.
Lory Gruenberger lived a happy childhood with her brother and parents in Breslau, Germany, close to the Polish border. To her doting father, Lory could do no wrong. Mr. Gruenberger, a partially paralyzed WWI veteran, had a flourishing law practice and refused his government disability pension. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they didn’t harass Mr. Gruenberger due to his veteran status.
By 1937, Lory’s parents recognized the rising danger for Jews and searched for a way to leave Germany. They applied for quota numbers to the U.S., but the wait was long. In the meantime, Lory’s aunts in South America sent papers for the family to emigrate there. The Gruenbergers sold their house, bought passage for South America, and shipped all their belongings ahead. Two days before their scheduled departure, the Argentine consulate informed them that Hitler would no longer allow siblings to sponsor each other to emigrate from Germany. They were unable to find a way to leave.
Map Showing Location of Breslau, Germany, near Poland in 1938 Courtesy of Dr. John Heineman – Boston College
The Gruenbergers had money, but very few stores would sell to Jews. They lived in a hotel in Breslau and started over, purchasing what they could. Lory’s brother completed secondary school three years early, and the family sent him to a small university in Czechoslovakia to get him out of Germany. During the summer break, they sent her brother to stay with Lory’s uncle who taught at Cambridge and Oxford in England. He never returned to Germany.
One morning in November, 1938, Lory road the trolley car to school as usual. During the trip, she passed store after store with smashed windows. In the center of town merchandise littered the sidewalks. She realized all the damaged businesses belonged to Jews. After leaving the trolley car, she could only see the top of their synagogue, but she spotted flames shooting from the edifice. She was so frightened, she crossed the street and took the next trolley back home, refusing to look out the windows on the return trip.
Lory arrived home, and the family maid, with tears running down her face, grabbed onto Lory. German officials had just arrested Lory’s father and taken him away ten minutes earlier. Lory’s mother was also distraught. But three or four hours later Mr. Gruenberger returned home in a police car. The Iron Cross belonging to a WWI veteran still provided protection for some Jews.
German WWI Iron Cross (Wikipedia – Public Domain)
Lory applied and was accepted for the Kindertransport. Her father wanted her to go to England, but at the same time he didn’t want her to leave. On the prearranged day, the Gruenbergers boarded the Kindertransport train with Lory and put her suitcase up. Her father lowered her window all the way down so she could lean out of the train – the German passenger trains had very large windows. They hugged and kissed, and Lory’s parents disembarked. While waiting on the platform, her father’s face turned whiter and whiter, and her mother couldn’t hide her suffering.
As the train started to move, Lory’s father asked to hold her hands through the window. Before the train gained speed, Mr. Gruenberger pulled Lory out the window. She fell on the train platform, causing injury and bleeding. Her father was extremely happy to have his little girl back, but Lory was devastated. After arriving home, her father admitted he probably shouldn’t have pulled her off the train, but after losing his son, he didn’t want to live without her.
Mr. Gruenberger chose to believe that nothing would happen to their family and stated as much to Lory and her mother. Lory was no longer allowed to attend school or the movies, but Lory and another Jewish friend decided to defy part of this order. Neither girl looked Jewish, so they removed their yellow stars and went to see Shirley Temple movies. When Lory’s father discovered from the other girl’s parents where she was, he went to the theater with a light and pulled her out. He slapped her, which he had never done before.
Most stores posted signs informing Jews they weren’t allowed to shop in their establishments. When Lory and her mother entered stores where they were welcome, they were greeted with “Heil Hitler.” They responded with “Drei Liter,” which means three liters, and because it sounded so close, no one challenged them.
In 1940, the authorities called women up for forced labor. Lory was fifteen years old and was assigned to clean the streets in another part of Breslau. She wasn’t allowed to ride on the trolley car because she was Jewish, so she had to get up at 4:00 AM and walk by herself in the dark almost 45 minutes to the assembly place. Lory was next assigned to work in a uniform factory where she mended and cleaned dirty uniforms. She did this until close to the end of 1941.
Various judges and lawyers visited Lory’s father and warned him that he and his family would eventually be arrested. The SS came at 4:30 one morning and nearly broke the door down. The Gruenbergers were only allowed to take what they could put on and nothing else. Lory’s father had a very high fever, and he was taken out on a stretcher and loaded on a truck.
Lory and her mother were taken on another truck to the huge yard of a synagogue and, along with hundreds of others, waited outside in the March cold for about two days and nights. They were then taken by truck to the railroad station and loaded into cattle cars. Thirty-five to forty frightened people traveled in the cattle car, in complete darkness, with no food, for two days.
After two days of traveling in the dark cattle car with 35 to 40 people and no food, the guards opened the door and ordered the prisoners to quickly disembark. The daylight blinded their eyes. Lory’s father waited outside the train for Lory and her mother, and he appeared perfectly fine. The prisoners traveled by truck to their final destination—Theresienstadt, a Jewish ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Because of his WWI service, Mr. Gruenberger had been given the opportunity to pay the German government to send him and his family to Theresienstadt, rather than to another camp or ghetto.
Theresienstadt – Prisoners Wait for Food Rations Courtesy of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York & the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Lory and her mother lived in a barrack with 300 other people. They slept on straw mattresses in bunk beds with three people per mattress. Lory’s father lived in a house with older, sickly prisoners.
Lory contracted spinal meningitis and stayed in the camp hospital for four months. The doctors were also prisoners, but they were able to get medicine for her through the Swiss Red Cross.
The Germans “beautified” the ghetto, dressed up the prisoners, and put on a good show for the representatives of the International Red Cross, visiting from Switzerland. Lory performed for them in a children’s choir. After the visit, more prisoners were crowded into Theresienstadt, and it became necessary to sleep in shifts, one group sleeping during the day and the other at night.
Theresienstadt Photo Taken During Red Cross Inspection Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
One day Lory was ordered to report to the railroad station and meet with an SS officer. He informed her she wasn’t going on the transport and sent her back home. This happened four times, and each time she said goodbye to her parents. The fifth time she was called she told the SS officer that she wanted to go. He gave her the chance to back out, but she had made up her mind. He crossed her name off the list and loaded her on a cattle car. Her trip ended at Auschwitz.
Selection of Jews for the Gas Chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau Courtesy of Yad Vashem & the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The guards opened the door, and Dr. Josef Mengele stood outside the car with his stick, hollering and cursing at the prisoners. The officers chased the prisoners out of the train, and Lory’s glasses fell off and broke. Since having spinal meningitis, Lory wore glasses to take the pressure off her nerves. Her inner voice told her not to pick up the glasses, and she obeyed. Mengele divided the prisoners, sending those with defects to the left, including those wearing glasses. This group went directly to the gas chambers, but Mengele sent Lory to the right, and she lived.
After a six to eight-week stay at Auschwitz, the Nazis transferred Lori to several different camps—Buchenwald, Dachau, Kurzbach and Gross-Rosen. At the beginning of 1945, she arrived at Bergen-Belsen where people died by the hundreds.
Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
One month before Lory’s twentieth birthday, the prisoners hollered and many ran outside. The English Army had arrived to liberate Bergen-Belsen. Lori only weighed fifty-eight pounds and was so weak she could only crawl halfway out on her hands and knees. She lay on the ground and prayed to God. A soldier approached and asked if he could assist her. The liberators wanted to help the inmates and gave them chocolate and chicken soup, but more people died from consuming the rich food.
Survivors & British Soldiers outside Bergen-Belsen Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum & Lev Sviridov
Attachments of soldiers from the French, Russian, and American Armies accompanied the British Army when they liberated Bergen-Belsen. They put together lists of the names and nationalities of the internees. Lory was fascinated when an American soldier from Germany spoke to her in German. The soldiers took her to a hospital for treatment, and she was surprised to see many people she knew, even folks from her hometown of Breslau.
One month after liberation, the British soldiers burned the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to the ground to prevent the spread of Typhus. The survivors were relocated to a former German Army camp nearby.
The British Burn Bergen-Belsen Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Lory traveled by bus to Hanover, a city nearby, to register as a survivor. There she found a man who had lived in the same building with her father at Theresienstadt. He recognized her but said she didn’t look too good. He shared that her father was still at Theresienstadt, but her mother had been transported to Auschwitz three months earlier and had gone to the gas chamber. He pointed out a bus driver whose route went to Theresienstadt once a week. Lory spoke with the driver, and he promised to ask about her father on his return trip. Lory wrote her name on a slip of paper so Mr. Gruenberger would see her handwriting and believe the bus driver.
Lory took the bus back to Hanover the day before the Theresienstadt bus was scheduled to return. She didn’t have a watch, so she waited on the street all night long to meet her father’s early morning bus. The bus arrived, but Lory’s father didn’t. The driver had checked on him and learned that he had left on a bus for Berlin two or three days earlier. Lori had no way to travel to Berlin and didn’t know how she would ever find her father.
Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum & Herbert Steinhouse
Lory met two young men who’d been traveling around Germany on foot, looking for family. They had come across a little town in Bavaria that wasn’t damaged, and the officers at the American military installation in charge of the area told the young men they’d be happy to have Jewish people locate there. The fellows asked Lory and her girlfriend to join them, and they traveled for a couple of days, begging for food along the road and sleeping with animals, including pigs, to stay warm.
Lori and her group rode into the Bavarian town on an army truck and were sent to a very nice furnished house. Jewish American soldiers, originally from Germany, brought them food the next morning. One of the soldiers was Walter Cahn, and Lory recognized him as the soldier who had taken her information right after the Bergen-Belsen liberation. She was astounded to see him again.
Walter helped Lory locate her father through the Red Cross and Military Intelligence, but it took eight months. After four more months, her father traveled to see her. They had been apart for four years. Lory was thrilled to receive his hugs and kisses.One year later, in 1947, Lori immigrated to the United States and married Walter Cahn. Over the years she corresponded with her father, but they didn’t see each other again until Lory returned to Germany with her son in 1962. She and her family visited her father two or three more times before he died in 1972.
Lory often pondered what would have happened if her father hadn’t pulled her off the Kindertransport and if she hadn’t been able to help her parents through the tragedy they had faced. She didn’t want to hurt her father, so she never brought the topic up with him. But Lory realized she wouldn’t have a normal, happy life if she hated the Germans. She spent many years speaking at universities, schools, and organizations, encouraging others not to forget what the Germans had done, but not to hate them. Lori had a wonderful, happy marriage to Walter Cahn for sixty-one years. She passed away in 2008.
Lory often pondered what would have happened if her father hadn’t pulled her off the Kindertransport and if she hadn’t been able to help her parents through the tragedy they had faced. She didn’t want to hurt her father, so she never brought the topic up with him. But Lory realized she wouldn’t have a normal, happy life if she hated the Germans. She spent many years speaking at universities, schools, and organizations, encouraging others not to forget what the Germans had done, but not to hate them. Lori had a wonderful, happy marriage to Walter Cahn for sixty-one years. She passed away in 2008.
Source:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer. Warner Bros., 2000.
In 1938 and 1939, the British provided homes for nearly ten thousand children and teens from the Nazi occupied countries of Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, saving them from sure death in the ghettos, concentration camps, and gas chambers of WWII Europe. To read how this amazing endeavor began, click on the link to my earlier post: The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Rescued from Nazi Territory.
Who were these rescued children and what are their stories?
Jack Hellman lived in the little village of Tann, Germany, population fifteen hundred and eight percent Jewish. His parents owned a general store where they sold feathers and down, piece goods, and ready-to-wear items. Jack’s family observed Jewish holidays, ate strictly kosher meals, and attended the local synagogue faithfully.
Anti-Semitism was evident in the late 1920’s, and it increased with the rise of unemployment in the district where Jack lived. Shortly before Hitler came to power, the SS entered Jack’s home and beat his father unconscious. The Nazis held torchlight parades in Jack’s village. He lay in bed haunted by the shadows flickering across the walls of his room and the marchers’ songs of violence against the Jews.
The local schoolmaster unmercifully beat the Jewish children with a cane, including Jack who managed to receive said discipline at least every other day. Most of Jack’s friends had been non-Jewish, but now they would no longer talk to him or his parents. When he was nine-years-old, a group of boys attacked him, throwing him through a plate-glass window, leaving him with severe cuts. In 1935, after Jack’s sister was also attacked, their parents sent her to live in a large Jewish community in Hamburg, and they sent Jack to live in a children’s home and attend the Philanthropin School in Frankfurt. Ironically, Jack’s Jewish headmaster was just as sadistic as the schoolmaster in Tann.
Boernestrasse Synagogue in Frankfurt on Kristallnacht Courtesy of USHMM
One November morning while riding his bicycle to school in Frankfurt, Jack observed two big synagogues on fire. Every Jewish business he passed had broken windows, had been looted, or merchandise had been deposited in the streets. School was cancelled and he was sent home. A message from Jack’s uncle awaited him—he was to tell his parents who were visiting him not to return home. Their store back in Tann was ruined, their car had been pushed down the hill, and their apartment had been looted and their furniture thrown in the street.
Jack quickly rode his bike to the train station and warned his parents, but they refused to stay in Frankfurt. After arriving home in Tann, Jack’s father was immediately arrested and sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He wasn’t released until early January.
That evening the Nazis broke the windows of the children’s home and took away the house father and everyone sixteen to sixty-five years of age. Jack was twelve years old and knew he and his family needed to leave Germany as soon as possible. His sister had already emigrated to the United States earlier that year (1938). The rest of the family had received quota numbers and had secured an American who guaranteed they wouldn’t become a burden to the U.S. government, but the number allowed into the country from Germany was so small that they had a five to six-year wait before they could leave.
The daughter of Jack’s house parents wrote to Baron James de Rothschild in England, requesting his assistance. Rothschild sent an emissary to Germany who arranged for the house parents, their children, and twenty-six of the boys in their care to move to England under Rothschild’s sponsorship. They left with the Kindertransport on March 16. Some parents refused to let their boys leave the country without them, but none of the boys who stayed behind survived.
Jack Hellman’s Teddy Bear He Carried on the Kindertransport Courtesy of USHMM
The boys and their house parents lived on the 6000-acre Rothschild estate at Waddesdon. The manor house reminded Jack of a castle he’d seen in pictures. His group lived comfortably in the eight-bedroom servant’s house called the Cedars. The boys played soccer on the lawn the first day they arrived, and the village boys came out to join them. When the villagers left for dinner, they told the newcomers they would see them the next day. Jack was so excited he ran in and told his house mother, ”’Somebody who’s not Jewish wants to see us tomorrow.’”
Jack commenced a campaign to convince his first cousin in London to get his parents out of Germany. The cousin agreed to get visas for Jack’s parents if Jack’s father had a work permit. Jack went to the manor house and personally asked to see Baron Rothschild. Rothschild asked if Jack’s father would be willing to work on the chicken farm, and Jack told him his father would do anything. The Baron went to the local notary, wrote out the work permit, and Jack’s parents soon received permission to enter England.
When they tried to leave Germany on August 30, 1939, only Jack’s mother was allowed across the border because his father didn’t have a “J” for Jew on his passport. Jack’s mother refused to leave without her husband, and together they went to a local bureaucrat. After Jack’s father emptied his pockets, the official corrected the passport. Jack’s parents arrived in Harwich, England, on September 1st, 1939, the day World War II began. Jack was one of the few children from the Kindertransports to ever see his parents again.
Jack found a place for his parents to live—a little six-foot by eight-foot flat with an open stairway. They were more happy and content living in that little flat than Jack remembers them being at any other time in their lives. Jack’s father also enjoyed his job at the chicken farm.
After two years in England, the Hellman’s emigrated to the United States where they were reunited with Jack’s sister and his mother’s brother. Their quota numbers came up much sooner because they moved from England to the U.S. rather than from Germany. Jack went on to become a building contractor in New York City.
Sources:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer.
In 1938 and 1939, the British people rescued nearly ten thousand children from the Nazi occupied countries of Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The background information can be found in last month’s post – The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Rescued from Nazi Territory.
Who were these young people and what are their stories?
Ursula Simon and her family lived in the small town of Quakenbruck in northwest Germany. Her mother sent extra rolls and sandwiches to school for other less fortunate children — those who were hungry because their families didn’t have enough food to feed them. Unfortunately, the recipients grew to resent these acts of charity and the Jews in the town who always had enough to eat.
After the Nazis took power in 1933, anti-Semitism flourished in Quakenbruck. The Simons’ old friends stopped visiting them, isolating the family from the community. Yearly birthday parties were normal in Germany, and Ursula’s mother prepared one for her when she turned eight. Not one child attended. Ursula now understood that she was different from the other children.
Ursula’s father, a loyal, patriotic German, had fought in WWI as a volunteer. He wouldn’t consider emigrating—not from the country he had fought for, not the country to which he belonged. He sincerely felt that the German people would remove the Nazis from power, that the problems were only temporary. But the persecution gradually increased and Mr. Simon had a nervous breakdown. He spent a long period of time in a psychiatric hospital.
Attending school became more and more difficult. Ursula was forced to sit alone in the back corner of the classroom, and the other children threw ink over her work. Her classmates terrorized her during playtime.
On the morning of November 9, 1938, soon after Ursula arrived at school, flames flickered in her classroom window. Fire engulfed a small, ordinary house across the street which served as the local synagogue. The students streamed outside to join the onlookers who clapped, jeered, and shouted. A family lived in one of the downstairs rooms of the synagogue, and their belongings had been thrown out a window into the street. Ursula made it home only to discover that her father had been arrested along with all the Jewish men in their town. They were sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Role Call for Buchenwald Prisoners, Mostly Jews Arrested on Kristallnacht Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
At Buchenwald, the guards took away the men’s shoelaces and braces. When Ursula’s father objected to the treatment of the older people, the officials beat him to death in front of the other prisoners to stamp down further opposition. Ursula’s family learned the truth from men who were later released from Buchenwald.
After the events of November 9th (Kristallnacht), Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend German schools. At the end of November, Ursula’s mother sent her and her sister, Hella, to a Jewish orphanage in Hamburg, Germany. The girls were thirteen and fourteen years old. By the summer of 1939, Ursula and Hella were placed on the list for the Kindertransport. Their mother prepared their clothes and embroidered their names on each item.
The girls had mixed emotions—they wanted to go to England but didn’t want to leave their mother behind in Germany. Even if she could find a position and sponsor in England, their mother needed to stay and take care of the girls’ blind grandmother in Quackenbruck. Mrs. Simon travelled to Hamburg in July of 1939 to send her girls off on the Kindertransport. Normally very controlled, she couldn’t hide the hurt and agony welling up from deep within. Her face contorted with grief as she and the girls parted for the final time.
The Simon sisters and fellow Kindertransport passengers arrived at the Liverpool Street Station in London and were taken across the street to a gym to wait for their foster parents to arrive. Ursula, Hella, and three others did not find homes that day and felt that nobody wanted them. They were sent to a hostel near Kensington to spend the night, and the next morning they were directed to the Refugee Committee in Bloomsbury.
The girls traveled unaccompanied in a country where they couldn’t speak or understand the language. Nevertheless they found their way to the Refugee Committee, and Ursula and Hella were assigned to live with a widow in Sussex. They were given a ticket, but they had to find their way to Sussex on their own. Their luggage was lost and the Committee promised to forward it to them, which they did—three months later. In the meantime, the girls wore one set of clothes and washed their underwear and blouses once a week while wearing a bathing suit their mother had put in their rucksacks.
Kindertransport Children in England Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The girls arrived at their new home only to discover that their host had expected little girls, and she only had a single bed for them to sleep in. Ursula and Hella were now fourteen and fifteen. The widow was very nice to them but didn’t understand that teenagers needed more food than she did (she had a very small appetite).
She told the girls that the Refugee Committee didn’t pay her enough for them, so they gave the widow the sixpence pocket money the Committee sent each week. Ursula wrote to her mother but wasn’t able to mail all her letters because she couldn’t afford pay the postage. One month later, WWII began, and she could no longer send or receive mail from Germany.
Ursula and Hella attended school in England and loved it. Ursula learned to speak English by devouring books from the school library, and she developed a love for English literature. But the girls desired to be independent. After Hella turned sixteen in November of 1939, she found work in a fever hospital (for those with infectious disease) and earned enough to provide for herself. Ursula attended school for nine months and then apprenticed with a very high-class dressmaking establishment. The Refugee Committee continued to support her, and Hella secretly contributed to Ursula’s rent. She also took evening classes to continue her education.
After the war, Ursula and Hella learned through the Red Cross that their mother had been deported to Minsk, Russia, where she was probably killed. The girls never obtained more information. On June 1, 1946, Ursula married Peter Rosenfeld, a fellow refugee from Germany. They raised four children and made England their permanent home. Ursula’s recorded testimony can be found on YouTube.
Kindertransport Memorial at Liverpool Station. Courtesy of Loco Steve from Bromley, UK in Wikipedia Commons
Resource:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer.
